This was really a quick excursion to test my radio kit, but it has a nice steep uphill to the trees which gets the heart pumping for a few minutes.
Route
Park at the back left-hand corner of the Rhodes Memorial parking lot and start walking up the obvious path that winds slightly to the left. You’ll cross over a contour path (not *the* contour path obviously) but just keep on ascending until you reach some tall pine trees with the right kind of distances between them (if you’re doing radio stuff). I bundu-bashed off the trail about 100m so that no one would see me once I was set up, but I did get some very strange looks from other hikers while I was trying to get the damned throw lines up.
Summary
Date: 29 September 2018
Distance and Elevation: <1km and 60m Elevation Gain.
Coordinates: Parking spot -33.952742, 18.458279 Tall Trees: -33.953195, 18.455623
Conditions: Perfect (needed shade)
Radio Stuff: Huge pine trees and my throw line meant I was able to get a 20m dipole up high (easily 15m AGL) and had surprisingly good communications despite being down the side of a mountain. Chatted with a friend in Johannesburg and Namibia (SSB) for quite a while and got the power down to 25w while still able to hold the conversation. Very little noise considering my proximity to civilisation.
Notes: There have been a lot of muggings in this area. It is stupid to take expensive kit in a nice bag up here.
arbitraryuser 